How to Brief Print Design: What We Actually Need From You
The single biggest thing that speeds up a design job — and gets you a result you're happy with first time — is a clear brief. The good news: a useful brief is simpler than most people expect. You don't need a design background or a polished spec. You just need to tell us a few key things.
Here's what actually helps, roughly in order of importance.
1. What it's for
The most useful sentence you can give us is the purpose. Not "I need a flyer" but "I need a flyer to promote our summer menu, to hand out to passers-by." The purpose shapes everything — the layout, the tone, what gets emphasised. A piece designed to sell a special looks different from one designed to explain a service, even if both are flyers.
2. The content — words and any must-haves
The actual text: headlines, body copy, prices, dates, contact details, any offer wording. It doesn't need to be perfectly written — we can tidy it — but we need the substance and anything that has to appear exactly as written (legal text, a specific phone number, a hashtag). If you're not sure how much to include, lean toward giving us more; trimming is easy.
3. Your brand assets
Anything that keeps the design consistent with the rest of your business:
- Logo — ideally a proper file (vector or high-resolution), not a screenshot
- Brand colours and fonts if you have them
- Photos you want used — at the highest resolution you've got
- Existing materials you want it to match (an old menu, your website look)
If you don't have brand guidelines, don't worry — most small businesses don't. Just send what you've got and we'll work with it.
4. Examples you like (and don't)
A couple of references go a long way. "I like how clean this one is," or "ours should feel warmer than this." It's far quicker to react to an example than to describe a style from scratch — and it heads off the kind of misunderstanding that causes revisions.
5. The practical details
The boring-but-important stuff: the size or format if you know it, where it'll be used (printed, on a wall, handed out), and any deadline you're working to.
You don't need it all upfront
Here's the part that surprises people: you don't have to have everything ready before you order. With us, you choose what you need and pay first, then upload your content, brand assets and notes through your portal at your own pace. If the logo's with your old designer or the copy isn't finished, that's fine — you build the detail in the portal and we design from there.
So a "good brief" isn't a hurdle to clear before you start. It's just the information we gather as we go — and the clearer it is, the faster you get artwork you can actually use.
The short version
Tell us what it's for, the content, your brand assets, a reference or two, and the practical details. Don't stress about polish or having it all ready on day one — order when you're ready and build the brief in your portal. The clearer the picture, the fewer rounds it takes.
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